The chief executive officer of the state-owned Caribbean Airlines (CAL), Garvin Medera has resigned after eight years in the position, the Trinidad Express newspaper reported on Friday.
CAL has issued no statement on the media report, but the resignation, if confirmed is the latest to hit the airline, after Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar had issued an ultimatum to the airline’s management, telling them to ‘sort out the mess’ within two years or face replacement.
‘I am giving the management of CAL two years to sort it out; otherwise, everyone there will be looking for a new job,’ Persad-Bissessar said in August, stressing that taxpayers would no longer bankroll under-performing State enterprises.
In recent weeks, CAL’s Kern Gardiner was dismissed from his role as executive manager of finance and Corporate communications executive manager, Dionne Liqoure, also left.
Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo, who is the line minister for CAL, told the newspaper that he was unaware of Medera’s resignation.
‘Thank you for the information. Frankly I don’t think it’s the practice for persons resigning from jobs they held, to advise me. But I note your confidence that I am intimately familiar with Mr Medera’s or anyone else’s actions,’ he told the newspaper.
The paper quoted sources as saying that Medera is currently on vacation ahead of his departure and that ‘he is reportedly in talks with third-party organisations in the private sector about new roles’.
On June 24, Reyna Kowlessar was appointed chairman of the airline’s board of directors, replacing Shameer ‘Ronnie’ Mohammed, who had been on the board since November 2016.